Chapter 23
Book Tradition Broken

It strikes me that we have a cul­ture of print-pub­lish­ing busi­ness mod­els super­im­posed upon the new dig­i­tal book media. Such mod­els restrain exper­i­men­ta­tion with new eco­nom­ic pro­to­types. For instance, it’s dif­fi­cult for authors and pub­lish­ers to exper­i­ment with the inclu­sion of adver­tis­ing (third-par­ty spon­sor­ship) in their pub­lished dig­i­tal works when Apple, Ama­zon, and Google put restraints on such adver­tis­ing. In this case, it means pre­vent­ing a threat to their rev­enue-pro­duc­ing monopolies.

It also appears to me that mar­ket-demand dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing has over­tak­en the print­ed book mar­ket for infor­ma­tion pub­lish­ing (e.g., How2 books) and oth­er gen­res. Mar­ket-demand pub­lish­ing is pri­mar­i­ly sup­port­ed by adver­tis­ing. It’s obvi­ous to me that adver­tis­ing pro­vides a huge poten­tial for the future of dig­i­tal book pub­lish­ing but is ignored in most pub­lish­ing conversations.

Market-Demand Publishing

This is pub­lish­ing based on mar­ket demand (for a top­ic) dis­cov­ered via dig­i­tal research. In oth­er words, the mar­ket demand comes first; then you cre­ate a pub­lish­ing prod­uct to sat­is­fy the demand. This is the oppo­site of tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­ing, which oper­ates on the mod­el of spec­u­la­tion about demand and then the pub­li­ca­tion of a book to see if the demand actu­al­ly exists.

Books are an unusu­al media in that they go back to the Guten­berg press in 1450. Although it’s true that some books were paid for by patrons, the patrons were gen­er­al­ly acknowl­edged at the begin­ning or the end of the book and not inside the con­tent. In oth­er words, the patron acknowl­edge­ments were not adver­tis­ing in the mod­ern sense.

Fur­ther­more, it came to pass that many books were cre­at­ed and sold by print­ers and pub­lish­ers who paid the author a roy­al­ty out of the pro­ceeds from the sales of books to con­sumers. This arrange­ment was well ingrained in the minds of the pub­lic long before the age of adver­tis­ing (and spon­sor­ship of media) which blos­somed in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Because the con­sumer pays for a print­ed book, there is pre­sum­ably no need to have adver­tis­ers spon­sor it. And because a print­ed book can­not be infi­nite­ly repli­cat­ed except at sig­nif­i­cant expense, book pub­lish­ing has not been a medi­um with enough vol­ume to lend itself well to gener­ic adver­tis­ing. In addi­tion, con­sumers often keep their print­ed books for a long time, some­times decades. Most adver­tis­ing becomes stale the first few months after pub­li­ca­tion and cer­tain­ly after the first few years.

Mag­a­zines and news­pa­pers (dis­pos­able media) were the first print­ed media to be spon­sored by adver­tis­ing, and they grew up and pros­pered in the age of adver­tis­ing. They, too, can­not be infi­nite­ly repli­cat­ed with­out some expense. Still, they are an ephemer­al mass media. So con­sumers are required to pay enough to at least defray the cost of pub­li­ca­tion. But it is adver­tis­ing that pays for the major por­tion of the con­tent deliv­ered in these two media.

Next movies came along and with a kind of busi­ness mod­el sim­i­lar to books. Con­sumers pay to see movies. And movies go from begin­ning to end with­out any dis­rup­tion from spon­sor­ship or adver­tis­ing. But movies are lim­it­ed-dura­tion enter­tain­ment, and peo­ple go to a the­ater and pay specif­i­cal­ly to enjoy the enter­tain­ment. For con­sumers, it’s an expen­sive 90 min­utes (com­pared to TV), and it’s doubt­ful whether con­sumers would tol­er­ate adver­tis­ing just to pro­vide a dis­count to the price. Since the­ater film per­for­mances are not infi­nite­ly repli­cat­ed with­out sub­stan­tial expense (the­ater build­ing, equip­ment, and employ­ees), the con­sumer must pay.

Nonethe­less, movies do sup­port adver­tis­ing and spon­sor­ship in their own way. First, in many movie the­aters there’s heavy adver­tis­ing, usu­al­ly local adver­tis­ing, before the fea­ture film and afterward.

Sec­ond, the movie indus­try itself uses the time before and after movies to adver­tise its own prod­ucts: trail­ers for oth­er movies.

Third, in mod­ern times movies also get rev­enue from prod­uct place­ment. The Ford car you see rac­ing through the movie in a crime thriller is not there by acci­dent. It’s there because Ford paid to have it there. Con­se­quent­ly, the movie indus­try is not exact­ly devoid of advertising

Then along came radio and tele­vi­sion: the broad­cast. The broad­cast is infi­nite­ly repli­cat­ed via radi­a­tion from a broad­cast tow­er. There is no need for a con­sumer to pay for the deliv­ery. Although con­sumers pay for the receiv­er (tele­vi­sion set) and even for ser­vices that pro­vide bet­ter recep­tion (cable tele­vi­sion), con­sumers do not pay for the broad­cast con­tent itself. The broad­cast con­tent is sup­port­ed by advertising.

It is true that cer­tain cable chan­nels pro­vide spe­cif­ic high-qual­i­ty con­tent and are paid by con­sumers (sub­scribers), but such chan­nels com­prise only a small frac­tion of the con­tent viewed on radio and tele­vi­sion. Adver­tis­ing pays for most of the content.

Note that much movie mak­ing has migrat­ed to video, and some has exten­sive ad spon­sor­ship. Thus, a made-for-TV movie may be deliv­ered via TV one time, or in install­ments, along with nor­mal TV advertising.

Digital Books

Cul­ture and tra­di­tion change very slow­ly and then often move ahead with great leaps for­ward. The idea of the dig­i­tal book has been around for sev­er­al decades, and dig­i­tal books have tak­en on the char­ac­ter of print­ed books; that is, they have been sold to con­sumers with­out adver­tis­ing in a for­mat vir­tu­al­ly iden­ti­cal to print­ed books.

Ama­zon came out with its Kin­dle ebook read­er and Apple came out with its tablet, both of which made dig­i­tal read­ing more con­ve­nient and less expen­sive. This was a great leap for­ward. The dig­i­tal book is infi­nite­ly repli­cat­ed at a very low cost. (Indeed, a well rec­og­nized mar­ket­ing tech­nique is to give away ebooks free to get a word-of-mouth buzz going about them so that the peo­ple who do not have a free copy will buy a copy.) Thus, the dig­i­tal book looks more like radio and tele­vi­sion than like oth­er media.

Yet through the momen­tum of cul­ture and tra­di­tion, everyone’s idea of a dig­i­tal book close­ly con­forms to that of a print­ed book; that is, the con­tent is unin­ter­rupt­ed by adver­tis­ing or spon­sor­ship. In fact, the pri­ma­ry pur­vey­ors of dig­i­tal books (ebooks and bookapps) have a spe­cif­ic biased against per­mit­ting dig­i­tal books to car­ry adver­tis­ing. The ques­tion is, can this adver­tis­ing-free for­mat for dig­i­tal books weath­er the winds of time? I think not, and here’s why:

1. Peo­ple con­sume much free con­tent from web­sites, blogsites, pod­casts, etc sup­port­ed by adver­tis­ing. Con­sumers have become quite used to see­ing adver­tis­ing in their con­sump­tion of dig­i­tal media.
2. Print­ed books con­tin­ue to be an expen­sive means of dis­tri­b­u­tion to the pub­lic, and print pub­lish­ers have not found a long-term busi­ness mod­el that will sup­port their pub­lish­ing in the future when print­ed books will be rare and dig­i­tal books will dom­i­nate the marketplace.
3. Apps that are books (bookapps) can be auto­mat­i­cal­ly updat­ed. This means that for bookapps that car­ry adver­tis­ing, the adver­tis­ing can be auto­mat­i­cal­ly updat­ed to keep it fresh. There is no rea­son this same auto­mat­ic capa­bil­i­ty can­not also be pro­grammed for ebooks.
4. The tech­nol­o­gy that deliv­ers inter­net adver­tis­ing enables pre­cise tar­get­ing; that is, ads can be deliv­ered that are direct­ly relat­ed to the con­tent being con­sumed. Such adver­tis­ing is much less annoy­ing, for exam­ple, than the gener­ic adver­tis­ing that every­one endures while watch­ing TV. Indeed, tar­get­ed adver­tis­ing can be use­ful to consumers.
5. Basic ads are easy and inex­pen­sive to cre­ate and place into dig­i­tal media. It doesn’t take an ad agency to pull it off, and even authors can do it.
6. The print book pub­lish­ers have lost a huge amount of mar­ket share in the infor­ma­tion­al gen­res to inde­pen­dent and even novice pub­lish­ers. It is the democ­ra­ti­za­tion of pub­lish­ing. In this new era of pub­lish­ing, the new pub­lish­ers are not as devot­ed to adver­tis­ing-free con­tent as the print pub­lish­ers have been. In fact, the new pub­lish­ers are search­ing for ways to mon­e­tize their pub­lish­ing efforts, and new types of adver­tis­ing and spon­sor­ships for dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing have already been invent­ed and used.
7. The rigid lines between the media of yes­ter­day and today are being blurred by the devices used by every­one, par­tic­u­lar­ly the younger gen­er­a­tions. The smart­phone is used to talk to oth­ers; to com­mu­ni­cate with oth­ers in a vari­ety of ways; to read books, mag­a­zines, news­pa­pers and oth­er infor­ma­tion tra­di­tion­al­ly pro­vid­ed in print; to watch dig­i­tized movies; and to gen­er­al­ly obtain all the infor­ma­tion, enter­tain­ment, and media in just one device that a per­son needs to be a hap­py and pro­duc­tive cit­i­zen in the dig­i­tal age.

With the dis­tinct lines between media being blurred, how much longer can the tra­di­tion­al pro­scrip­tion against adver­tis­ing in books last?

The ques­tion you have to ask your­self as an author (or pub­lish­er) is, where do I stand in this media per­fect storm? What inter­est do I have in sup­port­ing the con­straint of adver­tis­ing and spon­sor­ship for book con­tent? The answer is, none. Adver­tis­ing and spon­sor­ships of all dif­fer­ent types for inclu­sion in books is a sub­stan­tial oppor­tu­ni­ty for authors who want to be pub­lish­ers and make mon­ey for their con­tent-cre­ation activities.

Purists will attempt to adhere to the old print-pub­lish­ing busi­ness mod­els. But all the whin­ing and whim­per­ing will not serve such neo-Lud­dites well. At this point Dou­ble­day, Ran­dom House, Ama­zon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, and Google are vul­ner­a­ble when it comes to pub­lish­ing con­tent. It is up to authors to help forge new busi­ness mod­els specif­i­cal­ly for dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing so as to pro­vide them­selves with a greater share of the pub­lish­ing rev­enue in the future.

Authors of print­ed books are already required to pro­vide their own mar­ket­ing at a time when roy­al­ty advances from print pub­lish­ers are dimin­ish­ing and the num­ber of copy­rights ced­ed to pub­lish­ers is grow­ing. But in the new dig­i­tal age, if authors take the next step for­ward to find adver­tis­ers to spon­sor their dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing prod­ucts, they will ensure their inde­pen­dence from tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­ers and distributors.